So far she’s been a rarity in Washington — a health care administrator with a big role in implementing Obamacare who has bipartisan support in Congress. In fact, she doesn’t just have support, she has admirers, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who knows her from Richmond.

Cantor didn’t back away from his support for Tavenner on Monday, with his office saying that HealthCare.gov’s problems are too big to fix — even for someone like Tavenner.

“The problems with Obamacare transcend the website or one office within HHS,” said Cantor spokeswoman Megan Whittemore. “Tavenner’s recent appointment was encouraging, but this law is unfixable. More concerning is Secretary Sebelius’s mismanagement since Obamacare became law.”

But if competent management is Tavenner’s hallmark, competent management is what lawmakers are asking about regarding the decisions surrounding HealthCare.gov. Tavenner’s agency oversaw the experts that led the construction of the botched website, and her agency is now scrambling to fix it. The messiness of the rollout shocked Obamacare fans and foes alike.

Her eight pages of prepared testimony, obtained by POLITICO on Monday, sheds no new light on internal decision making or what HHS knew about the extent and the severity of the website problems. She mostly sums up the steps the administration is taking to address them.

Somehow, even smack dab in the middle of the rollout mess, she continues to engender little but admiration from both sides of the aisle.

“You would certainly think with what’s going on these days up in Washington that she would be in the cross hairs, but I haven’t sensed that,” said Laurens Sartoris, president of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association, who has known Tavenner for decades. “Marilyn’s name has practically gone unmentioned.”

All but seven Senate Republicans voted to confirm Tavenner as CMS administrator last spring, even though that placed her as the official head of the agency implementing the health care law which they despised. She was the first person to be confirmed to the position since Mark McClellan got through the Senate in 2004. She’s been in a top position at CMS since the start of the Obama administration.

Cantor showed up at her Finance Committee confirmation hearing earlier this year, where he praised her as “eminently qualified.” Before serving as Virginia secretary of Health and Human Resources under former Gov. Tim Kaine, Tavenner served as group president for outpatient services for a Richmond hospital chain in Cantor’s district.

Several Republicans who have specifically called for Sebelius to step down have refrained from urging Tavenner to quit.

Rep. Paul Ryan, who has called for Sebelius to resign, said the law’s problems extend beyond those implementing it when asked whether he thinks Tavenner should resign, too.

“Obamacare’s problems go way beyond personnel,” a spokesman for . Paul Ryan said when asked about Tavenner’s future. “The law is simply bad policy.”

Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa suggested Sunday that Sebelius should resign if she can’t get the exchanges fixed quickly. His office didn’t respond when asked about Tavenner.

A nonpolitical career spent working her way up from nurse to top executive at the Hospital Corporation of America has a lot to do with Tavenner’s ability to stay above the fray — along with a set of administrative skills that has earned her the respect of many in the health care community. Unlike Sebelius, a former governor, she was never a Democrat in elected office.

Those who have worked with her describe her as honest, straightforward and someone who gets the job done — qualities that could bode well for members of Congress trying to get explanations this week for the health care law’s troubled rollout.

“There just isn’t a backdoor full of hidden agendas,” Sartoris said. “I suspect people perceive that. If there’s an honest answer to be given, Marilyn will give it.”

Sartoris said he became acquainted with Tavenner as she served on the VHHA board. He calls her “direct” and “pleasant.” Most of all, “What you see is what you get” with Tavenner, he told POLITICO.

“She survives in political environments, but she’s not a politician,” he said. “Her job is to get the job done. I think that’s been at every stage of her career and so people, at least in my experience, perceive that about her, and I think she kind of exudes that presence if you will.”